Michial Farmer talks with Nathan Gilmour and David Grubbs about Alan Jacobs’s recent 
essay “The Watchmen.”
Michael Eric Dyson’s “Cornel West’s Rise and Fall”
Marilynne Robinson’s “Fear”
Robinson’s interview with Barack Obama
Philosophy, Theology, Literature, and Other Things Human Beings Do Well
Michial Farmer talks with Nathan Gilmour and David Grubbs about Alan Jacobs’s recent essay “The Watchmen.”
Michael Eric Dyson’s “Cornel West’s Rise and Fall”
Marilynne Robinson’s “Fear”
Robinson’s interview with Barack Obama
N.B.—I (Grubbs) was feeling specially cranky at some (possibly imaginary) indications of bias in Jacobs’s essay; it is possible (probable?) that what I thought was bias was actually a canny attempt to build a bridge of common concern between Jacobs and his Harper’s Magazine audience. Gilmour and Farmer are far more familiar with Jacobs, and so were, in this episode, in a better position to weigh Jacobs’s argument fairly.
I would push back somewhat on the premise of both the essay as well as some of the characterizations I’ve seen of it in the wider Christian blogosphere. I think – like Nathan I believe – that he ignores to what extent the set of circumstances he